Great year! Trout @caneloOficial Smith! Who want Cuban School next @FloydMayweather @RealMiguelCotto @gggboxing ??? pic.twitter.com/qEsKMBs67C

— Erislandy Lara (@Laraboxing) December 15, 2014

By Dan Ambrose: After recently beating Ishe Smith and Austin Trout and being arguably robbed in his fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, WBA World junior middleweight champion Erislandy Lara (20-2-2, 12 KOs) says he’s interested in fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr, Miguel Cotto and Gennady Golovkin in 2015.

Just which one of these three will say yes to a fight against the southpaw Lara is the big question. It’s quite possible that Lara scared away all three of them with his performance against Canelo.

Lara out-boxed Canelo for 12 rounds, and had the red-haired fighter hitting air with his punches all night long. Canelo landed only 30+ head blows during the fight. The judges gave Canelo the fight based on his body punching, and many of the body shots Canelo threw landed on the gloves of Lara.

Of the three big names that Lara wants to fight, Golovkin is the most likely of the three to say yes to a fight against Lara. However, it’s still a fight that probably won’t take place next year, because Lara showed interest in fighting Golovkin earlier this year, but there was no mutual interest in Golovkin’s side to take the fight. I don’t that will change with Lara fighting at junior middleweight. Golovkin is more interested in facing the winner of the Miguel Cotto vs. Canelo fight.

Mayweather isn’t going to move up to 154 to fight Lara because it’s a fight that would be potentially a difficult one for him. Lara doesn’t have a huge fan base, so Mayweather would have to be willing to take the fight for legacy purposes.

I don’t think Mayweather is going to do that given that he’s only got a couple of more fights left on his Showtime contract. He’s likely to face the guys that will give him the biggest paydays such as Manny Pacquiao and perhaps a fight against the winner of the Canelo-Cotto fight.

Lara will likely wind up fighting the likes of Joshua Clottey, Jack Culcay and Sergey Rabchenko in 2015. Lara could impress a lot of boxing fans if he were willing to face the Charlo twins, but that’s not going to happen because the twins won’t fight him. They spar with Lara, and they’re said to not be interested in facing him because of their friendship.

If Lara wants a big fight in 2015, he can always face WBO champion Demetrius Andrade in a unification fight. Andrade has shown interest in fighting Lara, and he’d likely jump at the chance of facing him if he offers him the fight.
Lara considers his fight against Canelo as a victory, not a loss. Lara feels he was unbeaten in 2014 in his fights against Canelo and Ishe Smith. I don’t think too many people would disagree with him there.